Chapter 7

Gloria knocked at seven in the morning with a cup of coffee and a look that said she had seen this exact version of a person before and was not frightened by it.

"Slept?" she asked.

"Some," Mia said.

"That's enough for now." Gloria handed her the cup. "There's a woman downstairs who does job counseling Tuesday mornings. She's good. No pressure—just so you know it's there."

Mia nodded. Gloria left. Mia drank the coffee standing at the window and watched the street below come to life—a man walking a dog, a teenager cycling, a woman in scrubs moving fast toward a bus stop—and thought: everyone out there has somewhere to be.

She used to have somewhere to be.

Nathan's update came at 8:14 a.m.

Warrant is more complicated than I thought. EchoTech's legal team filed the espionage complaint with corporate documents—meaning the DA has something on paper. It won't hold once Dom's forensic report is finished, but that's 36 more hours. Stay where you are.

She stayed.

She called Dom from the clean phone. He answered on the second ring, his voice close and focused, like she'd caught him mid-thought.

"Twenty more hours," he said before she could ask. "I want it airtight. Every layer documented, every methodology noted. This has to survive a courtroom."

"Thank you, Dom."

"Stop thanking me. It's interesting work." A pause. "Also you're innocent, which helps."

She almost smiled.

She spent the rest of the morning filling out job applications on the shelter's shared computer in the common room. The teaching license flag was still active—she checked, quietly, hopelessly, the way you check a wound you already know hasn't healed. Every education-adjacent posting bounced back. She widened the search. Administrative assistant. Library aide. Tutoring center coordinator.

All required background checks. All would surface the open district investigation within seconds.

She widened it further.

She applied to a Walmart on North Lamar. A Target on Riverside. A coffee chain on South Congress three blocks from the school where she had spent four years building a life that was now being publicly dismantled.

She submitted the applications without ceremony and went back to her room.

At noon, Sarah appeared at the shelter's front desk with a paper bag of groceries and Mia's winter coat, which she had folded carefully and secured with a rubber band.

"The officers were decent," Sarah said, sitting cross-legged on the end of Mia's bed. "I told them the truth. They left a card and said you should call the detective handling the case." She paused. "I didn't tell them where you were."

"You didn't have to protect me like that."

"You would have done it for me." Sarah handed her a container of leftover pasta and a fork. "Eat."

Mia ate. It was the first real food in thirty-six hours and her hands shook slightly on the fork, which she chose to find funny rather than frightening.

"The Walmart application," Sarah said carefully. "Did you—"

"Yes."

Sarah was quiet for a moment. "Okay," she said. And that was all. Not pity. Not protest. Just the respect of a friend who understands that some hills are not the time for comfort—they're the time for company.

They sat together until the light through the window turned from yellow to orange.

The blow came at 8:51 p.m. in the form of an email Mia almost deleted, thinking it was another auto-rejection. The subject line read: Notice of Formal Action — Texas Education Agency.

She opened it.

The teaching license was no longer flagged. It was revoked. Pending investigation had become formal revocation based on the volume and consistency of complaints received. There was an appeals process. It was outlined at the bottom in small, bloodless type. The timeline was four to six months minimum.

Mia read it twice.

Then she set the phone down on the nightstand with the same flat, precise click she had used when she set her school badge on Ramirez's desk, and she lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling and understood that she had arrived at the bottom.

Not the parking lot. Not the couch. This.

No license. No job. No house. No savings. No husband. A warrant. A lawsuit for three hundred and twelve thousand dollars. A baby no one would acknowledge.

She pressed both palms flat against the mattress.

The bottom had a floor. She could feel it.

Concrete. Solid. Hers.

She picked the phone back up and opened the appeals process instructions.

She started reading.